5 must-haves for REIT marketing websites

Poorly done REIT marketing websites can turn away even the most interested investors. What investors want are engaging sites with content that both educates and inspires.

Maybe it’s time to give your website a tuneup — or maybe you’re creating one from scratch. Either way, here are five features any effective REIT website will have.

1. A property portfolio

Perhaps more than anything — aside from performance — investors want to see your properties for themselves. Showcase them with large, high-resolution photos and organize them into categories like office, retail and residential. Park Hotels & Resorts has an interactive map listing all their properties by location. Once a user selects a location, they will see all relevant properties and their names, addresses, meeting capacities and number of rooms.

2. Performance metrics

Employing more than 70,000 people, Brookfield Asset Management is a publicly traded REIT giant. They house the information investors want most in one convenient place. Their shareholder site includes a regularly updated stock quote so investors have an ever-relevant picture of the company. Investors can also get the long view by exploring Brookfield’s dynamic Historical Lookup tool.

3. Data and useful content

Some REITs bucket relevant data and content under an Investor Relations tab. No matter how you structure it, include quarterly earnings, dividends, financial reports and filings, press releases, links to presentations and any white papers or reports you’ve produced on your site. Creating useful content cultivates authority and can pay off when visitors share your work with their network.

4. Build out your “About us”

Craft a succinct and well-written blurb about your fund and its goals, strategy and genesis. Show the faces behind your fund with interesting bios of your fund’s management team.

5. News

Include a section with the latest headlines about your REIT and the industry in general. Showcasing what’s new across the REIT space will help portray you as an expert and your site as a go-to source of information.

As with all marketing websites, yours will benefit from clear, unforgettable branding, including a catchy logo and pleasing colors, plus an easy way for potential investors to contact you. Incorporating all these features into your REIT marketing website will draw potential investors in, keep them engaged and inspire them to spread the word.

Deborah Lynn Blumberg has more than 15 years’ experience writing business and finance topics for The Wall Street Journal, Barron’s, The Christian Science Monitor and Newsday. She was a Knight Center fellow and a Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism fellow and is a founder and co-president of the Texas chapter of American Society of Journalists and Authors.